Em Rooney

Em Rooney
MFASO Artist Lecture
Wednesday, October 16 at 7:00 PM
Flex Space at 205 Hudson

Em Rooney’s multimedia practice is anchored in a study of film, photography, and the material indices of these seemingly ephemeral, auratic genres. In the artist’s earlier work, analog methods of photography were paired with sculptural framing devices. Using steel brackets, leaded crystal enclosures, pewter embellishments, and other heavy, industrial materials that engage tactility and imply a substantive weight to their contents, these works reinforce the photographic image’s material presence, as pictures grow increasingly untethered from authorship and origin in the digital era. Rooney’s images focus on the experiences of women and girls, her style deliberately pedestrian yet narratively opaque, indicating everyday mystery. As Rooney’s sculptural objects have increased in scale in recent years, so have they developed a formal autonomy from photography, while maintaining a conceptual link to film: costume design, filmic ephemera, and the portrayal of women onscreen inform the artist’s structural and material techniques, many of which are improvised in her studio and original to her practice. Based on botanical forms, or, most recently, the eclosion cycle of butterflies, Rooney’s sculpture continues to allude to the dichotomy between seen and unseen, as it is uniquely experienced by women.